When Is Facebook, Instagram and Twitter Going To Take Responsibility?
Some of the biggest and most powerful companies in the world are social media companies. They have been allowed to grow without any regulation and they seem to operate in their own world without any governing body, or government controlling their behaviour. They consistently tell us that it’s not their problem, but the people using the social media platforms problem. They also say they can’t control what is being posted, come on! Who are you kidding? Well, in my very humble opinion that is total nonsense, and it’s time they faced up to being responsible and started to operate their platforms in a responsible manner by removing content quickly that doesn’t belong anywhere let alone on a social media platform where teenagers and young people live out their lives.
Last week we witnessed the horrific and absolutely terrible terrorist attack by a white supremacist in Christchurch, New Zealand. If this had been reported in the more traditional methods such as television or newspapers, it would have shocked all of us, but no, we were subjected to it being live streamed on Facebook. How shocking that now we are living in a world where we log into Instagram or Facebook and watch mass murder taking place.
My initial thought was with all the “clever people” who I am assuming are employed and working in Facebook, why was this not flagged within seconds and the transmission turned off? Surely the super clever algorithms they have can pick up something so horrific and take it down?
Of course that didn’t happen. It was played out for the world to see and then the world decided to record it and consistently re-post it all over Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Amazingly as quickly as one post was taken down another one was posted. Just imagine your teenage child accidentally coming across these videos and the lasting effect they could have on them. It could be so traumatic and leave a mark in their mind that is impossible to remove. After all, it’s not a PlayStation game where people get up after being shot. No, this is real life where human beings were slaughtered in cold blood by a maniac.
The devastation to communities, families and New Zealand will be far reaching because of the actions of one man that had social media at his disposal to show the world live. My heart goes out to all those affected by this shocking incident.
Is that what our society has come too? That we want to be shocked by horrific images? Are people sitting in front of screens watching something that would never be allowed under any circumstances to be shown on television or the cinema, yet social media has no censorship and they are consistently flouting the rules, and more worryingly being allowed to get away with it because governments across the world are quite honestly scared of their power and money, and for some reason refuse to legislate against them.
Social media. What is it really supposed to be about? In my naivety I always thought it was a way of chatting to friends or catching up on news. Nowadays that is so far from the truth. Sadly, it’s turned into a very nasty place to be where some very unpleasant people can be found.
Social media is a bombardment of adverts from major celebrities and large worldwide companies all the way down to the mini influencer who believes in a product they are advertising when in truth all they are worried about is how much they are getting paid.
The rules of advertising are consistently being ignored. Only the other day I saw an Instagram post from somebody with a following of 30k plus and it was obvious that it was an advert yet there was no mention of it being an advert. That is breaking all the rules, yet nothing is done about it. If that was done on television there would be uproar and fines.
Is it right that our young people and children are able to access self-harm or suicide posts when they are possibly already suffering from mental health problems? No, it’s not and social media is contributing to young people taking their own lives.
Is it right to consistently see the picture perfect family image that has been airbrushed, edited and quite frankly making their kids stand there just so they get the perfect Instagram picture? It is a total nonsense. It’s not the real world and it can, as my 24 year old daughter told me the other day, leave you feeling depressed and down, and actually believing you are not good enough because you can’t live up to the false representations that are shown on Instagram everyday.
Parents really need to stop bullshitting that they have this idyllic perfect family and family life. That only ever happens in the movies. It undermines and affects how parents see family life, and can be very detrimental to their mental health. If as a parent you may be having a hard time and then you see these images it could easily destroy what confidence you have left.
Last week Instagram and Facebook crashed for about 24 hours. It was amusing to see some of the tweets on Twitter, but also very sad that people revolve their lives around Instagram and were actually going into meltdown over it not working so that they couldn’t see what somebody had eaten for their tea, or that moment of parenting that has been staged or I’m having a bad day so I will just pour my heart out on Instagram in a 50 word post because I want all my followers to say sending you hugs and love. Utter BS!
In was interesting to me that Facebook has never said why it stop working, but made a point that it wasn’t hackers. Who are they kidding? Of course it was hackers and I think they are in for many more attacks that will shut down these social media platforms for periods of time.
Back to my original question of social media platforms taking responsibility. It’s never going to happen. They are too rich and way too powerful, and now at a point where nothing can be done to stop them taking over the world eventually. They are already dictating what we do, how we do it in every aspect of our lives. They are bombarding us with adverts at a rate never before seen in the history of the human race.
Governments across the world need to grow a backbone and start to legislate to make sure Instagram, Facebook and other social media channels tow the line and obey the law. These are billion dollar companies that don’t care about people. All they care about is the money and power that their social media platform brings to them.
If we are not careful and this is where the real danger is “our children” will grow up in the belief that if it is on Instagram it has to be true, because OMG! Instagram and its users never lie, it’s real life haha! Yep of course it is.
What do you think of social media platforms? Are they out of control? Should they be held responsible for the content that is posted that is not acceptable for a civilised world and yet is constantly being uploaded?
I would love to hear your views.
16 Comments
Maria | passion fruit, paws and peonies
March 22, 2019 at 7:56 am
Great post and I don’t have any much to add. Yes they are out of control (as is Amazon). It leaves me wondering what on earth will it take for things to change xx
Dave Pearson
March 22, 2019 at 8:32 am
The problem is that governments all over the world are too slow to keep pace with technology. The laws in our country are often found to be inadequate in the modern age yet changing laws and introducing new one seems to take an age in our arcane beurocratic ways. I know it’s nos social media but a recent case to make my point would be when a single MP (just one man) objected, in a debate attended by a fraction of our 600+ MPs, to a motion put forward on bringing in a law to make “up-skirting” a criminal offence. One man stopped that because of the archaic rules in our parliament. I take his point onboard that he does this as a point of principle to ensure proper debates, however, that in itself is just as ridiculous.
I don’t always subscribe to the idea that governments should regulate all aspects of our lives. However, with the Internet (not just social media) they need to upgrade out legislation and laws. But not only that, they need to develop a mechanism whereby those laws can be adapted as quickley as technology enhances and changes.
As the horror from NZ, I appear to have been fortunate that the video has never shown up in my news feed on any platform. Of course, even if it did I wouldn’t watch it. You are correct, the ability for this video to be constantly re-shared is ridiculous and these companies should be able to stop it. But, I work in tech and some things will always get through – however, that should be a minority. I’ve seen some comments that the live feed should have been stopped. My question to that is how? With live feeds, they’ve created a monster that can’t be monitored by a human all the time and algorithms just won’t cut it.
As ever, educating our children and doing all we can is what WE can do right now.
I was reading this anyway, but also saw it on #ThatFridayLinky
David and Donetta
March 22, 2019 at 9:08 am
Interesting read.
Social media is purely a tool. People are the problem, social media is just a tool that is exposing people. Facebook doesn’t DO anything, people DO.
Too much money, power and not a care for anyone… Sounds like the government to me not just large businesses.
As for fake lives being portrayed, again there’s nothing new here. How many times did you sit down with your parent and grandparent to look at photo albums and all the photos were of arguments and their house looking untidy? None. You only want to capture the best bits.
I think it’s more about educating our children and others about the reality behind it all than anything else.
The answer to everything is really, people. Humans are the ultimate problem.
Louisa
March 22, 2019 at 10:12 am
I think these huge social media companies have to take some responsibility. It is all about ads and revenue to them. However people also have to take some responsibility for the content that they chose to share. I am not sure what the answer is but there should definitely be more regulation on content and offensive posts should be removed. There is no way that these huge companies do not have the ability to do this, more like they haven’t got the inclination to take action.
Anne
March 22, 2019 at 11:07 am
I felt myself nodding along to all you said here Nigel. I grew up without Social Media and spent a fair amount of my life without it. When I first had a home PC I found I could talk to others online in forums which was great for sharing, but highly moderated so if anything went bad it could all be washed clean in an instant. This is not the case with Social Media and as a parent it terrifies me. My daughter is now 13 and has a Twitter account but hasn’t shown any interest in Facebook or Instagram..thank heavens. All my kids watch Youtube though, but have to through my account so I can check everything. So, a lot of it is down to the parents being sensible..but so much more of it is down to the big companies that are raking in millions while sensitive people are being exposed to so much they shouldn’t be seeing. I used to like Social Media but I find myself using it less and less now, and if I didn’t have a blog then I probably wouldn’t use it at all.
Enda Sheppard
March 22, 2019 at 11:18 am
Obviously it’s a hard one, how best to regulate social media. It would seem that at its most extreme, like with the Christchurch massacre, there can be no logical objection to having such things blocked or taken down. But as things move down the scale, when we get to the grey areas, or matters of taste and opinion, then it is much more tricky to monitor, let alone, regulate. All this to say, you would think it should be possible to take down the gruesome stuff, but it really is complicated. Great post, Nige #ThatFridayLinkly
Random Musings
March 22, 2019 at 11:19 am
I agree with you to an extent – obviously the NZ shooting should never have happened, let alone been live streamed. I do think that it can go too far the other way as well though. Who gets to say what is and isn’t appropriate? At what point does it become a dictatorship where only things that match a certain view can be shared?
The problem, as ever, is no matter what measures are put in place, certain people will abuse them. While I do think the owners of the sites should make some effort to monitor posts etc. ultimately, they aren’t the ones sharing this content. People are sharing it, watching it. As always, people are the problem not technology.
Debbie
Sarah-Marie Collins
March 22, 2019 at 11:35 am
It’s so devastating that what should be such a positive place has turned into one of such negativity. I really hope the strong media focus on the lack of regulation and highlighting the online groups that encourage self harm, eating disorders etc will force social media platforms into acting.
Josie – Me, Them and the Others
March 22, 2019 at 12:48 pm
Unfortunately I don’t think they will do anything until they are forced to by law. They have too much power to be swayed without legal compulsion unless enough users vote with their feet which I just can’t see happening. #thatfridaylinky
Alan LaCasse
March 22, 2019 at 4:37 pm
Interesting read Nigel. Sadly it’s not just the Social Media giants that are earlting away at the soul of humanity.
Every day we are bombarded with advertisements. Selling us shit we don’t need that is destroying the planet and using up resources.
For the majority of humans life revolves around working to get money to buy stuff they don’t need that will solve a problem they never knew they had.
Social Media is only as good as the people that use it. I’m fortunate in that I never saw the video and manage to also not see most of the nasty stuff on their.
I read that no one reported the live feed from Christchurch which is why it wasn’t taken down.
Kids are a different kettle off fish. I’ve checked through my kids social media. (With them beside me) and they have people they don’t know from Adam on there.
They also seem to pass each others SM details around without a second thought. I’d never give someone’s phone number out withouttheir permission. I treat their social media the same. If someone can’t find it themselves, they should ask the person themselves.
Sophie
March 22, 2019 at 5:47 pm
I agree with Dave. The technology is going too fast for governments to act. They need to act now before we are out in danger as a human race by technology (not so far fetched actually as once computers can self learn, well….). Social media is all bollocks! It’s fun though and I love Instagram at the moment. The live streaming has to stop though and this could be stopped by having a time lag; easily done. Great post. #thatfridaylinky
Mia ~ My Lighthouse In The Storm
March 22, 2019 at 5:49 pm
I think that social media giants need to take responsibility for their platforms but people in general need to take responsibility for what they post on social media, how much of their time they spend on social media and whether it’s actually a requirement to have it at all (it isn’t).
Social media can be a wonderful tool but people are giving these tech giants way too much power and control. I don’t believe governments need to legislate, I believe people need to take some responsibility for themselves and their own wellbeing.
#ThatFridayLinky
lisa pomerantz
March 22, 2019 at 7:59 pm
We are really headed down a rabbit hole and there is no returning. It is so damned scary that this is happening and we are allowing it to happen. Zuckerberg and his cohorts are the very worst, with the latest news of millions of passwords being released? What the heck? #thatfridaylinky xo
Calleen Petersen
March 22, 2019 at 9:07 pm
I agree and disagree. The NZ tragedy shouldn’t have been live streamed and social media platforms should take steps to shut that kind of thing down, but I’m not completely sold on making a bunch of laws about it either though.
Rosie Doal
March 24, 2019 at 9:39 pm
I was equally as disgusted with the events of last week and how social media platforms take no responsibility. The only thing they care about is making money. And I agree – why put your kids through hell just to click that ‘perfect’ picture. I use Instagram responsibly – if my kids pose for a photo, it’s on their terms. I will never force them to stand there – and I never show life as being perfect – especially on my blog too because no one has a perfect life. It’s about time people started portraying real life. What a world we live in #ThatFridayLinky
Jo – Pickle & Poppet
March 24, 2019 at 10:07 pm
I agree there should be some responsibility by the companies, certainly with the content of what is being put on there. Illegal, and horrific! I didn’t even know Insta / Facebook had gone down in those 24 hours (and I call myself a blogger ha ha) I did hear the following day and people making comments as to how they had to speak to people. I prefer to live in the real world! #ThatFridayLinky